‘Irishmen could suffer in spirit with Spain’: Mairin Mitchell’s Storm over Spain, Ireland, and the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

Storm over Spain (1937), by Mairin Mitchell, is a rare case in the bibliography of the Irish in the Spanish Civil War. This travelogue, which narrates the journey of the author around Andalusia in the months before the beginning of the conflict, has received scant critical attention by historians, literary critics and cultural analysts working on Irish and Hispanic Studies, despite offering a first-hand account of the atmosphere of tension and fear that preceded the Spanish Civil War. This essay pays attention to her book Storm over Spain with the aim of reassessing its merits as a powerful narrative, as a reliable source of information on the Spanish Civil War, and as an example of the pervasive influence of Irish history as a methodological approach to explain social structures in other cultures. In particular, it examines Mitchell's position on the Spanish conflict in the travelogue by looking at her discussion of a number of events and atrocities that took place during the war.